Bloodborne

Gary Sax wrote: Rom the Vacuous Spider is my bane. Fuck this boss. I'm doing the Chalice dungeons so you have to fight him again. FUCK HIM. I think I had an easier time on Ebrietas than I have on Rom the Vacuous Spider.

There's basically two tricks to beating Rom.

First, when the long range crystals go up, just run left. Left and slightly forward and roll like twice and nothing will hit you. It doesn't matter where you are in relation to him, just go left. You don't even HAVE to roll, but you increase your chances of not being hit if you do.

Second, I don't really understand why people say to ignore the spiders. Fuck that. There's a finite number of them. Since you're using the whip like a proper gentleman you're all set. You hit them head on they take no damage, true, but if you whip them twice on the head they recoil and expose their belly, whipping them a third time in succession head on is as good as hitting them from the side. A high enough whip (I was +7 with about 27 skill and probably +15% Phys damage from my ruins) is enough to kill them in just one round of three hits. I'd imagine this works with the saw weapons and anything quick enough, but I didn't try with anything else. Start with the ones furthest outside, then work your way to Rom, then go around to the other side and work your way back in.

Kill them all, then go hit Rom. When he starts to warp keep swinging your weapon. He continues to take damage until he completely vanishes.

After the first warp If at any point he starts to thrash or flip onto his back just roll away. The thrash is dangerous, the vertical crystals are deadly, but both have almost no range and your only REAL threat will be walking into the spiders while avoiding that. If you kill the spiders, you don't have to worry about it.

Beat last two bosses. Solid fights, but I was pretty over leveled from basically doing everything in the game. Rolled them with the whip.

The new weapon you get is super cool. Undecided between it, blades of mercy, or the trusty cane whip as my new weapon.

Planning on platinuming it so I cheesed a little and got all three endings. Now I just have to beat lvl 4-5 chalice dungeons for my last two trophies. They are real hard new game+ stuff.

Level 4 chalices get hard!

Still trying to get Platinum trophy in this game. All that remains are the chalices but they are really hard. I just got to the defiled Chalice (lvl 4 Pthumerian), but it takes away half your health which makes the bosses really hard.

FUCK the defiled chalice. I finally beat the amygdala w/the forced half health--> one hit kills. I'm in the last dungeon level of the level 5 dungeon that gets you a platinum trophy. I'm really proud of completing this one.

Interesting story bit in the next to last boss. It's a giant HEADLESS beast (w/requisite worm that eventually bursts out). So basically it is where the scourge of beast blood originated. Remember the cutscene after Vicar Amelia---there is a beast head on the altar, the "medium" where the church got its blood originally. Well, the now dead beast it belongs to is in the chalice dungeons as the next to last boss fight. Pretty cool that there are even story beats in the most unstory part of the game.

PLATINUM MOTHERFUCKER.

Last dungeon is dead simple compared to the nightmare Defiled Chalice that comes before.

What a game. Excited for Dark Souls 3, but to be honest I just want more Bloodborne agility style combat rather than shield grinding.

Bloodborne DLC thread revive.

HYPED.

Started playing the DLC. Had to first get to the DLC because I was at the beginning of New Game+.

It's difficult. Not that difficult because I am so massively overleveled (~level 140). That's due to me platinuming the game and having to grind through those fucking chalice dungeons to do that. So even though it's slightly difficult, I still hit like a freigh train and have a huge amount of health. I think this DLC would be *incredibly* difficult if you were at a normal level for your playthrough. Most of the enemies are hunters, though not quite as a hard as the ones in the normal game, who were almost like minibosses.

Cool weapons so far, though. The circular saw is rad.

Justin McElroy is in the situation you describe --finished the game, so he's in New Game+ mode, and would need to get to the DLC via asskickings he's not interested in, or by rolling a brand new char with no way to port stuff over. That's kind of a drag.

Sets up nice for me, though, hoping a kind soul Santa's this game to me. Er, I mean, miracle-lamp-chanukah's it to me.

I was watching sc_slayerage stream this game--looks like you can just dodge by most baddies. Also he seemed to have a bag of garbage on his head?

Jesus, this expansion is not fucking around now that I'm into it. Bosses are TOUGH and the regular content isn't vastly easier either. I would definitely wait until late in your play to get into this DLC---though the weapons introduced in it are really cool. They make me wish I had invested in Arcane early in the game, which was not much of an option in the base game if you want to be a badass.

It all definitely fills in the story in a very interesting way, but I seem to be the only one here who thought the Bloodborne story was cool.

Getting to it proved to be about a session and half's worth of gaming through new game+ content because, like I said, my character is such a buzz saw even relative to new game+ due to the platinumed the game.

Seeing my friend struggle through this game this weekend brought me back. On the first boss in the expansion, who is pretty tough. Got him down to 1/8 or so, though, so I think it'll come.

On to the last boss of the expansion and at this point I'm just co-oping to be done. I'm very happy with Bloodborne but I think the game is complete for me. Ready to have the last optional boss over with (Laurence).

The expansion actually answers a number of interesting lore questions, so it's interesting on that level as well.

100% done. Wooooo! The last thing that had me cursing like a sailor was this room in a well in Innsmouth where there are two giant shark men in the same place. What a fucking bitch of a room, and you need to finish it to get the last new weapon in the DLC, which gives you that last trophy.

The DLC is very hard in parts, and not very hard in others. I would definitely not hesitate to call in assists for Ludwig and Laurence, and to a lesser extent son of Kos. It's just a huge pain in the ass otherwise.

I probably won't return to Bloodborne. I enjoyed it but I have no desire to finish my NG+ that I did the DLC on. One thing that does suck about Bloodborne is that you get so invested in a particular weapon that you simply don't bother to switch. I played the entire game with the Hunter pistol and the cane whip, the first two weapons I got, and never changed. While that's kind of cool it's also pretty static---I never even bothered with the DLC weapons even when they looked cool simply because I would have to level them up to +10 to get them anywhere near my badass cane whip. I think this is an oversight and I'd like to see them do a little bit better with the game with regards to making you switch weapons or at least make it easier to switch between different weapons without losing upgrade progress. It needs some encouragement to diversify.

This thread is a trip. A lot of the stuff you guys discovered are obvious homage to DARK SOULS and it cracks me up. I saw that giant pig and I knew right away where my Saw Spear was going, haha.

I've beaten BSB, Vicar Amelia, Gascoigne, and the Blood-Starved Beast in the Story, and I took on a really frustrating (me, not him) Zombie Giant in the Pthumeru Chalice Dungeon. I got shredded by Darkbeast Paarl, but I am okay with that. Just seeing him let me hang out with Djura and we shook on not murdering Beasts in Old Yharnham. I helped Eileen beat Henryk and managed to get a couple more folks to the Chapel. That little girl, though, man. Story beats, oof.

I am Arcane heavy, going into fights with Saw Spear, Firesprayer, and Tonitrus depending on what I am fighting. Giants get get absolutely ripped up by Tonitrus, and of course beasts melt under the spray. Saw Spear is good because the thrust attack in long form is really long. I can hit some guys through doors and stuff, just cheesing.

I tried to go to the woods behind the Grand Cathedral and just got stone killed by those crazy-haired sickle wielding things. Advancing in the dungeon until I sort out my next move. I'll go get Paarl at some point, that's probably my next move.

I did note it is night now. That seems bad. The church guys crosses glow know and they hit harder, but some other guys are missing, so we'll see how things progress.

Yeah, you're about to hit the jump where the game completely changes theme from universal horror stuff to cosmic horror.

I read somewhere that the arcane equivalent of the flamesprayer (rosmarinus?) is completely OP if you're heavy arcane. Or maybe it's the flamesprayer itself? Whichever scales on arcane. Yeah, you should get a little bit farther in the game and then take dive into the DLC. You can pick up some pretty rad arcane stuff you might be interested in.